@zabattacks: Simplified isn't necessarily the reason I don't like Infinite as much, but yeah, I don't like Infinite as much as the first game (I always liked it as much as two, for different reasons; both superb, but not as good as the first). Mechanically, it's fine. I feel like I've said it too many times, at least to want to say it again right now. To be short about it, Columbia is a nice looking place, but I like Rapture way more and its self-contained story, with the assortment of interesting characters. I am not as into the way combat is approached (even if the shooting is arguably better), where it feels a lot more standard, since in the first, you would just walk around Rapture, and there'd be Rapture's drug addicted citizens crazily rambling, waiting to take you on on sight, or for you to just walk on by going to the next destination, as opposed to 'clear this area out, and then you can move on'.
Also, initially, I was disappointed that Infinite didn't even upgrade the look of the weapon when you upgrade the gun. That was cool. It doesn't bother me now, but it was just one of those things where, the less Infinite was like the first, the more disappointed I was. That said, the things Infinite does do with character and story, I love. I was excited to play Infinite before it came out because, like the first game, I wanted to be transported to a place and a time, where there was something interesting going on there; you'd explore themes that made you think, and you felt part of that mystery, as well as taking in bits of history, down to details like listening to music from 1912, but that's not exactly what it was; that was more of a facade to what it was really about, though what it was really about, I actually love. Take away a plus, and put another plus in, though for me, it didn't entirely make up for the loss of the other.
When I booted up Infinite earlier today, the aspect of simplification didn't so much as come to mind in that way, I never really thought about the alarm aspect (although jumping from two, into Infinite, not being able to shoot at a camera or turret with a hack tool, it was slightly jarring), though I had heard people dislike the only two weapon approach. That doesn't bother me. I did think about just how far you can streamline something, and how/if that changes the impact of anything. For instance, in the first two Bioshock games, you had to choose which plasmid you wanted to have out until changing it when you go to a gene bank, while in Infinite, all you have to do is select the vigor by pressing and holding a button down to open a wheel menu. Same with abilities, only they're in the goal/map/voxaphone menu. There feels like a lot less options in Infinite, but I kind of like that you can choose between any of them on the fly.
They're all, always fresh in my mind, but still, jumping from one game to the next, the differences are clearly felt. I have to say, I don't really get the complaint of not being able to dual wield the plasmid and gun in the first, when you can in the second, because the only difference is between how fast you can do it, and we're talking about seconds.
Edit - Playing Infinite now. Also, something that comes to mind, which is also partially a reason I don't like Columbia as much, is just by its visuals. When you look out over the cityscape, in Rapture, it filled me with wonder, where I could think 'I wonder what's going on there'. It was either detailed with lights and what looked like in engine graphics, or in the farther distance, a beautiful painting that was perfectly suitable, and really felt distant. Sometimes, the only thing that was distracting, which I really only just noticed going through it on this collection, is that some windows would show the same exact thing, even if you're looking in an entirely different direction, and sometimes not show an area, like a walkway or building you were just in. In Columbia though, when you do the same, throughout the majority, especially where I am now, just outside of the Hall of Heroes, you look out, and many of the buildings are not only the same, they also look like terribly cut pieces of paper floating in the sky, where it's hard to imagine that there are inhabitants there.
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